A silver halide color photographic material generally has silver halide emulsion layers sensitive to three elementary colors of red, green and blue, and color images are reproduced by the method of developing three types of color couplers contained in the respective emulsion layers so as to be complementary to the colors to which the respective layers are sensitive, the so-called subtractive color process. The color images obtained by photographic processing of the silver halide color photographic materials generally comprise azomethine dyes or indoaniline dyes formed by reaction of oxidation products of aromatic primary amine color developing agents with the couplers. The color photographic images thus obtained are not necessarily stable against light and wet heat. If they are exposed to light or stored under the circumstances of high temperature and humidity for long periods of time, the fading or discoloring thereof is produced, which results in deterioration of image qualities.
Such fading or discoloring of the images is a disadvantage which may be fatal to recording materials. As methods for removing this disadvantage have been made the various proposals of developing couplers having high fastness for the dyes obtained thereby, using antifading agents and using ultraviolet absorbers to prevent image deterioration due to ultraviolet rays.
Techniques for preventing image deterioration with antifading agents have been actively developed among others. For example, it is known to add hydroquinones, hindered phenols, catechols, gallates, aminophenols, hindered amines, chromanols, indanes, ethers or esters of these compounds whose phenolic hydroxyl groups are silylated, acylated or alkylated, metal complexes and salts of organic boron compounds (See JP-A-63-108074, the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application).
In recent years, increasing customers' demands for storage of images lead to requirements for recording materials having higher fastness. However, though these compounds surely show the antifading effect, they are insufficient to fulfill these requirements, and moreover, many of them adversely affect photographic characteristics. The salts of organic boron compounds described in JP-A-63-108074 not only are insufficient in image storing effect, but also tend to produce fog.
A technique for improving image fastness is therefore required which does not have adverse effects such as fog on photographic characteristics and does not produce yellow-stains (yellowing of unexposed portions).